Dairy marketing has changed from recommending the number of daily serves, to putting out spot fires that flare up with animal welfare campaigns.

Once it communicated directly with the media, schools and health professionals, but now Dairy Australia’s marketing has to be ahead of opponents, while also building trust and telling great farming stories, communications strategy manager Glenys Zucco told Tasmanian Dairy Conference attendees last week.

Marketing now revolves around social licence, or “meeting expectations before they become regulations”, Ms Zucco said.

To ensure Australia’s dairy industry does not follow the same path as the greyhound industry, Dairy Australia is working to move beyond promoting dairy’s health benefits to build trust.

The market has evolved and Dairy Australia realised it had to change tack to keep up.

“To maintain social licence we can’t just talk about the positives; we actually have to listen, understand and address some of the concerns the public had about our industry – and do it in a very transparent way,” Ms Zucco said.

“One of the biggest drivers of outrage is when there’s a really big gap between what people think we do and what we actually do.”

One example of this gap is cow/calf separation, with many consumers not realising cows need to birth a calf to produce milk and that cows and calves have to be separated for that milk to be collected.

When such a gap exists, Ms Zucco asked whether it was Dairy Australia’s job to highlight it – if doing so would affect its brand.

“If we don’t do it others will. Activists are getting more sophisticated and they’re doing the story for us.”

Any claim arising from the information contained on the eDairy News website will be submitted to the jurisdiction of the Ordinary Courts of the First Judicial District of the Province of Córdoba, Argentine Republic, with a seat in the City of Córdoba, to the exclusion of any another jurisdiction, including the Federal.